Zoid

Really? Off the top of my head, I came up with

Up
Ratatouille
The Incredibles
The three Toy Story movies
The Avengers
The first three Star Wars movies
The first three Indiana Jones movies
Shawshank Redemption
When Harry Met Sally
Superman
Superman II
Iron Man

That's eighteen movies, and I could easily find more if I checked IMDb.

Also, the blog post is tagged with the words "satire" and "snark", so yes, it was definitely intended as a joke.

The blog strikes me as obvious satire. It was no prank; a prank implies that the author was trying to convince people that Ayn Rand's ghost actually appeared. I doubt the author was really trying to convince anyone. I think he was just using artistic license to make a point. Think, "The Onion."

I don't want to discount your childhood experiences, DreamSpirit, I'm sure the fear and creepiness you felt were real. But, "it's a haunting," is one of the least rational explanations for spooky noises and feelings. Old houses express their age in noise as the house shifts, drafts from poor insulation, and uninvited animals who've nested in the walls. The human mind has a natural psychological need to connect the dots; when no dots are there it will make them up.

When Ayn Rand said that individual rights should not be subject to public vote, she meant that rights-violating government policies like welfare programs and socialized medicine should be banned no matter how many people support them.

Criminal trials arise from the need to protect individual rights. A jury deliberating on a verdict is not voting on whether individual rights should be protected, but on what decision best protects those rights. This is the case even if the jurors make a mistake.

If homosexuality is permissible then why not relations with animals?-or machines?-or plastic yard flamingos? Ayn Rand was against the moral anarchy of anything goes relationships. She understood that rational/moral happiness based upon objective criteria, and it's biological function (ie law of identity), were essential to rational happiness in an objectivist context. Sure, people can choose to live all sorts of lifestyles that they think can make them happy, but rational happiness must be defined within the context of reason or else you end up with hedonism and/or nihilism, which is prevelant in the libertarian/anarchist circles.

Hooray, unicorns exist!

Dremspirit, I'm certain NDEs are the result of common changes in brain physiology close to the point of death. I know of no studies that suggest that people close to death have special "psychic" senses. Obviously, conducting such a study would be unethical or extremely difficult, but regardless, NDEs can be explained using perfectly unsupernatural language that involves dissosiative states, "jumbled" memory, and the like.

I don't know if you have any personal familiarity with mind-altering drugs, and I'm not asking. But it is important to note that people who have never taken drugs often don't understand how radically different one's perception of reality can become after small adjustments to brain chemistry. For instance, dextromethorphan (DXM) is a drug that seems to invoke a set of experiences that I have trouble distinguishing from the experiences reported after an NDE. You can read about DXM experiences HERE. This information is anecdotal, but it does give you a sense for similar experiences that we know to be the result of biology. If you just want to skim it I'd suggest focusing on sections 8.2.1 to 8.2.5.

For a more scientific approach to NDEs, look HERE. The gentleman writing the blog refrences several studies, one of which links NDEs to elevated CO2 and Potassium levels with depressed pH levels. Of course, you might say that these chemical explanations are just a physical expression of a psychic phenomenon. But nothing I have heard has lead me to believe that NDEs are any different than ghost stories. I know my share of otherwise trustworthy people who claim to have been haunted. While I wouldn't say for certain that they are lying, I am sure that they have at least misinterpreted their experiences.

Hooray, unicorns exist!

You know what? I'll explain to you exactly how people started talking about "god" when there is no such thing.

People exist in this universe. They have an idea of the universe that they observe and what it means for things to exist. They observe things being created and deconstructed and made into new things. They form concepts of absence, like when they lack money or apples. They observe the universe and things in it and try to figure out how it works, and then try to figure out further and further how and why things happened and did the things that they do. In this manner, they got ideas about limitations, lack of various things and limits, creation, so on and so forth. In their questioning about the universe, they notice that there have been lots of beginnings and endings, makings and unmakings and they wonder, "Does the universe itself have a start like these other particular things I have observed within it? If it does, was it created by a conscious being, like when I create paintings?" They then conclude yes and yes to both questions for whatever of a bunch of possible explanations that do not involve actually meeting any such creature and observing without a doubt such creation of the universe being done. They then apply concepts they have observed before from other things - like size and power and location and such and try to make them as big as they can imagine and even bigger than that because they figure it would take something really impressive to create the universe, a much bigger and more complex thing than a painting or a model airplane or even rockets and nuclear bombs. The entire thing is the product of picking out and rearranging bits and pieces of information that they got by observing actual things that exist in response to some curiosities they may have. This is how it can get started anyway at least. After that, one person just tells another on and on down the line.

I have read all of Ayn Rand's novels..

She stops short in most of them, She doesn't reach her own point.

Ayn Rand proclaims herself to be an Atheist. That is what Saves Rand from True Godlessness.

IF YOU CAN FIND THE ABSOLUTE UTTER LACK OF GOD IN RAND'S WORKS.

A PERSONS WHO HAS TRULY COME TO A CONCEPT OF "UTTER LACK OF GOD."

WILL ANSWER THE QUESTION , "Are you an Athiest?", By replying , "NO!"

Because you see, If you come to an Utter Lack of God, then there is no such thing as Athiesm, it ceases to exist as a concept.

Many Objectivists have turned to trying to find GOD in Rand's Work, why?? Because of the flaw that Ayn Rand introduced by proclaiming herself to be an Athiest.

If Rand had gotten to TRUE GODLESSNESS, She would have also proclaimed that she wasn't an Athiest also.

Ayn Rand was an Athiest. She had God in that tiniest sense.

Both the Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged have God in them, in the barest essence in their Atheism. Which is why there for a time Objectivists started trying to Integrate a Notion of God into Objectivism. Well it is there in Rand's Athiesm itself.

Rand's Mere Athiesm is one step short of TRUE GODLESSNESS.

The opposite attempt is to Rid Objectivism of God altogether by comming to an "UTTER LACK OF GOD" which will destroy Atheism itself.

Objectivism has God in it, in the narrowest sense, in the smallest amount.

And that is as far as Rand could go philosophically.

If she had gone further she would have found herself stairing at the Ultimate Question.

Ayn Rand in her Athiesm doesn't deny God's existence at all. Which is what has objectivists seeking an integrated notion of Objectivism and God.

Which is what will ultimately save Objectivism itself.

Objectivism cannot survive without God....

It is interesting that it takes a flaw in Objectivism to keep it viable to people as a system of thinking.

Christ puts no stipulation on the socio-economic model that man lives in.

Which is why also that man can live with Communism for 80+ years also.

Christ will allow man to exist in a purely Capitalistic Society as much as he will allow man to exist in a Purely Communist
Society.

To abandon God because you want Capitalism is erroneous thinking also.

To abandon God because some men will not let you have a purely Capitalistic Society, is flawed thinking as well.

You think that people would abandon those people and not Abandon God, but nope.. That guy over their voted me into
Socialism, I think I will abandon God in retaliation, Just doesn't make any sense.

So Rand's fit started about Communists and rightfully so, she was powerless about that and chose atheism instead.

But Christ is left Scratching his head because Jesus Christ never told Ayn Rand that she wasn't allowed to make any money
or to Own Property, ie, That Trading powerhouse, The House of Hurr.

So perhaps it is possible to live in a Capitalist world and not abandon God also, seems possible to myself.

Just as it is possible, to feed the homeless around here without a Communist's Makorov Pistol to your head also.

Hooray, unicorns exist!

**MOD NOTE** To be clear, I did not start discussion on this inane "inside baseball" topic. it was split from this thread: http://forum.objecti...showtopic=22166 (-sN)

An "intellectual heir" is not the same category as a "legal heir". A "legal heir" is a designation. A person can designate one or more other people as being their legal heirs. An "intellectual heir" is an evaluation. An intellectual can evaluate one or more people as being their legal heirs. By doing so, all they would be saying is that -- in their evaluation -- those people understand their ideas and use their ideas as a starting point in their own intellectual work.

If Plato says "Aristotle is my intellectual heir", it is completely legitimate for someone else to question that evaluation. Plato knows his own philosophy, but may be misunderstanding Aristotle. Also, Aristotle may be Plato's intellectual heir at the point Plato made the evaluation, but he may later cease to be. (In fact, the term "intellectual heir" is so loose that one might say that Aristotle can reject some of Plato's ideas and still be Plato's intellectual heir if he builds on other ideas of Plato.) Centuries later, one might say St. Paul is Plato's intellectual heir, even though Plato never knew him, nor is there any chain of persons making such evaluations, from Plato down to St. Paul.

The phrase "legal and intellectual heir" is a neat marketing line, because it reinforces the evaluation, giving it the connotation of a designation. Unfortunately, too many people seem to read too much into this. All said and done, calling someone the intellectual heir of another person is just an evaluation.

There is a right to privacy in the sense that individuals have the right to control access to their property and the government must have probable cause before searching an individual's property. But there is no "right to not have your street photographed." Google Street View initiates force against no one.

Wow, this guy has the philosophy of... well, pretty much every Final Fantasy villain ever.

First, I wouldn't say the person in the video he was responding to is a "moral nihilist" - as you said, he's a utilitarian who seemed to be advocating "the greatest good for the greatest number." In any case, Rand didn't write much about nihilism because there's not much to write about - it's not even a belief, it's the negation of belief. In a sense, the whole of her philosophy is her response to nihilism; by giving answers to the major questions about existence, knowledge, human nature, and choice, she shows that there are meaningful solutions to these problems.

As for the claims made in the video, where do I start? It's difficult to count the number of terrible premises he's arguing from. To me, the four most egregious ones are:

1. Ethics is about minimizing the suffering of the collective.
2. Real happiness doesn't come with "a price," i.e. proper happiness is automatic.
3. Life is the story of the "haves" exploiting the "have-nots."
4. The fact that life is finite makes achieving values impossible.

Of course, Objectivism rejects all of these claims:

1. Ethics is a code of values to guide man's choices, with the goal of furthering his life. While to a rational man, the flourishing of other people is a value and the suffering of other people is a dis-value, neither is his fundamental concern. The existence of suffering does not eliminate the possibility of a happy, moral life (our friend would contest this, of course - see (2)). It's not hard to see, then, why the Objectivist ethics regards a man who would destroy all life in response to suffering as pure evil.

2. Because life is a process, it requires effort. Thus, there can be no such thing as "happiness without a price tag." It's also not true that pleasure is solely the result of staving off suffering. I think everybody knows athletes who are already in excellent health who still enjoy working out, or an older man who hasn't retired because he loves his job too much.

3. The world is not a pie over which people fight for fixed slices. One man's gain is not another's loss. This is the principle that makes benevolent interaction between human beings possible. This is covered extensively in "The 'Conflicts of Men's Interests" in The Virtue of Selfishness, so if you want an extensive rebuttal to this point I would read that, if you haven't already.

4. While the observation that everyone and everything we value will be no more someday is depressing, it doesn't negate the achievement of values over the course of one's life. Again, life is a process, not an end result. We seek productive work, hobbies, and the company of friends for the time we will spend enjoying them, not because we expect them to be eternal. Making this argument is like saying that you can never enjoy a movie, because it will be over in two hours.

The most disturbing thing about this video to me is how many up-votes it has. People are scary sometimes...